


and if its crazy, live a little crazy

by SurrealSupernaturalist



Series: The Scottish Safehouse Anthology [1]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, HAVE YOU EVER CONSIDERED: LEITNER MUGS, Horror, Multimedia Fic, Paranormal, Post-MAG160, Set in Episodes 159-160 | Scottish Safehouse Period (The Magnus Archives), Teacher Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, be warned when i say spooky mugs i MEAN spooky mugs, im so excited about this concept i just was to Share, spooky mugs, this oc is just leitner but better
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-14
Updated: 2020-10-14
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:01:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27004765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SurrealSupernaturalist/pseuds/SurrealSupernaturalist
Summary: Ko likes to collect things. Mostly, though, she collects novelty mugs. Mugs that are heavier than they should be, mugs that contain an ocean, mugs that follow you around the house. If it's strange, if it's weird, if it's sideways from reality, Ko will take it off your hands.If you still have them, that is.------------------OR: A student stumbles into the paranormal, and learns to live with it.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, its not mentioned but its there - Relationship
Series: The Scottish Safehouse Anthology [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1970932
Comments: 53
Kudos: 197
Collections: RaeLynn's Epic Rec List, tma fics





	and if its crazy, live a little crazy

**Author's Note:**

> its awfully muggy out there today -sips from bowl-
> 
> ahsgfdsahfdfgdsa no but seriously. my singular neuron decided to fire for once in its life and i was like. BUT WHAT IF. LEITNER MUGS. and things just went downhill from there. i just want to share this idea. Ko is just a vessel through which i communicate my thoughts and is also an excuse to write some teacher!jon. he doesnt turn up much in this but there is more incoming! i plan to make a whole series which is really just me in a sandbox of Thoughts that i have but its just. really fun to write. subscribe to the series and stay tuned!!!

FOR SALE: Two Perfectly Ordinary Mugs

$5 Each

[Photo ID: Two mugs sitting on a kitchen countertop. One is pitch black, darker than one would think possible but nonetheless there, slim with a slight curve outwards at the lip. The other is hot pink, and bears a slight rainbow shimmer in an unrecognizable pattern.]

Looking to sell two normal mugs for cheap, I’ve had enough of them in my life and they need to go. First come first serve, willing to negotiate on the price. I will pay for shipping. 

Email me at kam.go@hotmail.com

\-----

To: kam.go@hotmail.com

From: koko42@gmail.com

Subject: Two ‘Perfectly Ordinary’ Mugs

Hi Kam!

I’m looking to buy your two ‘normal’ mugs, full-price. They look very interesting!

Out of curiosity, however, what is it that they do? I promise that whatever the answer is will not dissuade me from buying.

Kind regards,

Ko

\-----

To: koko42@gmail.com

From: kam.go@hotmail.com

Subject: RE: Two ‘Perfectly Ordinary’ Mugs

I guess I should have known they’d get scooped up by some freak collector. Whatever, just take them. I’ve linked my paypal, just let me know your address so I can get them out of my hair. 

The black one makes you blind if you drink it, the pink one makes you see fractals. At least I think they’re fractals. The blindness goes away if you drink milk, but the fractals are permanent. 

\- Kam

\-----

To: kam.go@hotmail.com

From: koko42@gmail.com

Subject: RE: RE: Two ‘Perfectly Ordinary’ Mugs

I take offense to that! I’m just a Perfectly Normal Collector ;)

That’s a couple of neat-sounding mugs you have there. Milk to cure blindness? I feel like there’s a story there. Care to share?

Ha, that rhymes.

My address is below. Cheers!

Ko

\-----

To: koko42@gmail.com

From: kam.go@hotmail.com

Subject: RE: RE: RE: Two ‘Perfectly Ordinary’ Mugs

Fuck YEAH there’s a story, why do you think I’m trying to get rid of them?

So, I knew I already had the fractal one, after an old buddy of mine drank out of it and has had the pattern in his vision for years now. I liked to use it for annoying clients? As far as I’ve been told they don’t really impede much, they’re just mildly annoying like a persistent itch, so it makes for a pretty harmless prank. I’ve lost count of how many people I’ve affected, which sounds bad, I know, but you’re the one taking the damn thing, so you don’t get to judge. So, it’s not locked up anywhere, and it’s hot pink, so I’m not exactly going to accidentally fractal myself.

In comes the black one. I grabbed it from a clearance aisle a couple weeks ago. I’m always looking to grab professional-looking stuff for cheap and a couple ones I had got busted on the way home from a house viewing, so I grabbed it. Cut to a week later, and me, making a cuppa after a long day. 

Imagine my shock when the damn thing BLINDS ME. Complete fucking darkness. And, in my panic, I remembered that drinking milk cures blindness in Minecraft. Don’t judge me for shitty logic, I was panicking. I still had the milk jug near me, so I poured it into whatever mug I could grab that wasn’t the one I just used. I don’t know why I didn’t just chug it straight, I guess I still managed to retain some manners. TURNS OUT IT WAS THE FRACTAL MUG. I fucking freaked. Knocked the jug away from me at some point.

SO.

MY SITUATION WAS:

  1. I was blind
  2. I could only see fractals
  3. I had lost my milk jug, of which I was still absolutely sure was my only hope



As you can imagine, it was a disaster.

Eventually I managed to feel my way to the fridge for the other jug I had, and a proper, normal mug, and, as it turns out, fucking Minecraft logic applied to real life. The fractals stuck, though, and I see them every time I close my eyes. They’re going to drive me up the wall, I swear. Karma, I guess.

There’s your story. Now take the damn mugs.

\- Kam

  
  


Ko likes to collect things.

Seashells of various sizes, colours, and species litter her windowsill, filling up little weave baskets and cardboard shoe boxes. They hang in string chains from her ceiling and clink in a gentle breeze when she leaves her window open.

Her earrings are individual and unique, no two alike. Baby doll feet and screaming Kermits, hoop earrings with dangling golden eyes, disposable soy sauce bottles and two halves of a clam shell. Her favourites are the worm-on-a-string, one bright green and the other a rich purple. 

Shirts with prints from independent artists online litter her closet, anything and everything that strikes her fancy. Spare buttons occupy her top drawer, largely plain but with plenty of interesting shapes and designs. Postcards sprawl like wings above her bed, both ones that she bought herself or ones that her aunt sent her before she settled down in London. 

But mostly she collects novelty mugs.

It felt natural, after Dian, quiet, gothic Dian, admitted to collecting tea one day, after Ko showed her friend the many collections that fill her life. You can’t have tea, after all, without something to drink it from. And soon enough, it was one more thing to collect.

Every square inch of surface area she has is dedicated to her collection. A replica of Chip from Disney's _Beauty and the Beast_. A white glass with music motif and a handle shaped like a guitar. A steel tankard with a clear bottom and a fake penny. 

A red and white striped mug that sings circus music when you press your ear to it, like a conch shell and the sea. 

Ko picked that one up in a garage sale, and it’s her first. Not her first mug, no. But her first Mug. And certainly not her last.

When it’s quiet, and her seashell chains clink in the silence, she can hear the distant tune of a calliope organ as she lies on her bed, reverberating and echoing through the mug. Ko closes her eyes, and listens to it sing.

Her second was not nearly so pleasant. Her father brings it home from work one day to add to her collection, a friend from work having dug it up while gardening. Caked in dirt and something dark, she takes a brush and tackles it in the kitchen sink.

The gunk falls away in thick globs to reveal a mug of ivory bone. She watches it fill with water, and she watches that water turn thick and red. She tips it out, and watches it fill, and turn, again. She tips it out once more and dries it. She does not allow her dads to drink from it.

And so, alongside the more ordinary glasses of her collection, her weird lot grows. 

Plenty of them are harmless to drink out of, a few more simply inconvenient, but not insurmountable. 

One is sticky and brown and is impossible to get clean no matter how hard she scrubs, and when she gives up, a thick, slimy worm tumbles out and washes down the drain. She stares at it as it disappears, certain that if she had filled it with tea and not soapy dishwater, it would have slithered down her throat, and not the drain.

There’s a mug filled with dirt and weighs more than it should sitting on her doorstep one morning, thick and stout with a heavy-set handle, and she doesn’t bother emptying it. It doesn’t feel possible.

She pays it little mind, right up until a mouse, the one her dad _swears_ has been getting into the laundry, pokes its little nose into it and promptly gets swallowed up as Ko watches on in distant horror. She hides it away.

Dian thrusts one with hypnotic patterning at her one day at school. 

“I thought it could keep me awake, for once.” She bites out, coffee staining her lips and bags like rope hanging from her eyes. “And it did. For far too long.”

The one she hates the most is the one that gives her flashes of the heat death of the universe, cold and empty and dead, the one that fills her to bursting with all-encompassing dread. It’s horrid. It leaves her shaking. 

The one that screams is a close second, though.

A solid amount are downright dangerous, and Ko wraps them in newspaper and plastic and stores them at the back of her wardrobe. But she still takes them, finds listings and stories and pleas and takes them off their hands and lends an ear to their warnings. 

A woman drowned on dry land after chugging from a cup that never emptied, that kept coming, an entire ocean down one tiny throat. 

A man went insane staring at the inside of a thick tankard, the rest of the world forgotten as he appeared to be drawn deeper and deeper into the fractal patterns that adorned the mug’s insides. 

A college student lost an arm while during the dishes, the greedy mug chewing up their limb like a sink waste disposal gone feral.

All of them now sit, innocuous, in individual sealed plastic containers. It doesn’t feel like much, but her dads have yet to notice the oddities, and she plans on keeping it that way. Only Dian and Kit need to know. Steel boxes are out of the question. But plastic is enough, somehow, and the world is safer for it. 

So long as they aren’t disturbed.

  
  


_Outgoing call………..11:46am_

[Unknown Number]: Hello?

[You]: Hi! This is Kyōryokuna James, I left a voicemail the other day?

[Unknown Number]: Oh! Hi, sorry, I didn’t— you really want it?

[You]: I wouldn’t be calling if I didn’t. (Laughter)

[Unknown Number]: A-ah, right. Yeah. So… Look, it’s just— I thought it was fine? It was weird, but cool, and honestly _useful_ , so I— I don’t—

[You]: —breathe—

[Unknown Number]: — _what went wrong?_ It was _fine,_ I-I don’t _understand_ —

[You]: —take a deep breath. In.

[Unknown Number]: (A deep, audible inhale)

[You]: And out. Take all the time you need, I’m right here.

[Unknown Number]: (A long exhale) ...I— thanks.

[You]: Anytime. I’m going to take it off your hands, okay? So you don’t have to worry about it anymore.

[Unknown Number]: Why… why do you want it? I can _barely—_ I can’t trust my own senses anymore, I— _why?_

[You]: Honestly? (A short laugh) I just like to collect things.

[Unknown Number]: I— what?

[You]: Yeah! And, well, it means there’s one less danger in the world. One less person like you to become a victim. So, that’s a plus. 

[Unknown Number]: …I suppose. That’s… that’s one way of looking at it, yeah. Hm…

[You]: Can you tell me about it?

[Unknown Number]: Sorry?

[You]: The mug. Can you tell me about it? It’s alright if you don’t want to! I just—

[Unknown Number]: —want to know what it does?

[You]: Yes. Please. 

[Unknown Number]: ...alright. Yeah, I— I can do that.

[You]: So I know how to deal with it.

[Unknown Number]: O-oh! Right, of course— from the beginning then?

[You]: Only if you’re comfortable!

[Unknown Number]: It— it’s alright, I need to get this off my chest, anyway. So, uh… yeah. (A long, shaky breath) I got it for Christmas, as a Secret Santa gift. I don’t— I don’t think he knew what it was? My— my co-worker, Andrew, he— it wasn’t like it was a, uh, _malicious_ gift, especially not when— (Nervous chuckle) I— I’m getting off track. 

[You]: That’s okay, take your time.

[Unknown Number]: Y-yeah. Um. So I tried to make hot chocolate. It was winter, why— why _wouldn’t_ I be curled up in blankets a-and— well— _anyway_ , when I looked down at it it was exactly what I put in it, but— but _then_ I had to put it down, God, I don’t even remember why, but. But when I looked at it from the side— it— sorry, it’s made of clear glass, I forgot to mention, so you, uh, can see into it. But. It was different. It was— and I’m really _not_ joking here, (A slightly hysterical giggle) it was _orange juice_.

[You]: Really?

[Unknown Number]: I— I know! So I looked back at it again, closer than before, so from above— coffee! Black coffee! It _changes_ , Miss James. Every time you look at it from a... a different angle, it changes the drink inside it.

[You]: Huh. That sounds exceedingly handy.

[Unknown Number]: It— yeah. It was. That’s why I kept it. Didn’t tell Andrew, though— _God,_ what does he think of me now? I need— I should talk to him. 

[You]: Maybe you can do that after this?

[Unknown Number]: No! No, no, you don’t understand— he hates me now. He has to, after… Look, you _really_ don’t— it’s not— it’s all _blood!_ It— it’s all I can _taste_ anymore, I— _shit._

[You]: _Wow_ , okay, are you—

[Unknown Number]: I don’t— I had a breakdown. At work. At some point the glass, it— it changed to blood at one point, but it _always_ changes, so I changed it to tea but it still _tasted—_ it’s only blood, now, I— it’s not even just the mug anymore, it’s— it’s _everything,_ it’s _all—_

[You]: _Breathe._

[Unknown Number]: (A long, shaky breath, followed by an equally long exhale) I— I’m sorry, that was… 

[You]: It’s alright. 

[Unknown Number]: _Yeah_ , it— it’s not pleasant, only being able to… to taste blood.

[You]: I’d imagine so… 

[Unknown Number]: Just. Don’t drink out of it.

[You]: I won’t. 

[Unknown Number]: Yeah… Um. I’ll text you my address? You mentioned that you’re nearby in your voicemail—

[You]: I can come and pick it up, yes.

[Unknown Number]: Do… Do you think this is, uh, _permanent?_

[You]: I… Most likely. Only one way to find out, I suppose. Sorry.

[Unknown Number]: (A sigh) ...yeah. 

[You]: I can drive down this weekend, if that’s okay?

[Unknown Number]: _Yes_ , please.

_End call………..12:19pm_

  
  


Kit likes to give them stories. 

It’s not that he likes them—quite the opposite, in fact. But they’re _interesting_ , and so he writes. That’s how he justifies it, anyway. But Kit’s always looking for inspiration, always digging for a tale to be told, drawing it out from whatever crevice he’s stuck his fingers into. 

He’s off whenever the muse strikes, scribbling whatever lines and prose has snagged his attention, his flash fiction tucked away in a neat black spiral notebook and hidden from the world.

Sometimes he narrates his stories quietly, not minding who listens—if he speaks it, he’s willing to share it. 

Nowadays, he has a constant observer for these occasions.

The mug is light blue and stout with a strange indented wave design, and appeared one morning on her kitchen counter. Ko barely batted an eye at it, so accustomed to the strangeness in her life by this point. So she picked it up, brewed some earl grey, and proceeded to chase it around the house for a full ten minutes before she had to get her act together in time for school.

She finds that it likes to jump around, never in the same place twice and never where she last put it. It could disappear between one blink and the next, or manifest in much the same manner. She finds that it stays put longer with hot chocolate, but throws a fit when she tries and drinks any kind of black tea out of it. 

She finds herself forgetting it, when she can’t see it, the memory of the charming glassware washing away like the tide. The guilt is staggering, overwhelming and eye-watering when it next comes into sight, but she grows accustomed to the burn in her throat as she has to everything else. 

Ko is fond of this one, this little piece of ceramic with a personality. And she thinks, despite the sorrow it inflicts, it’s fond of them, as well.

Their little follower latches on to Kit as much as it has Ko, if not more. It sits quietly, listening to his spun tales and soft voice. It brings him coffee, on occasion, and it makes him smile.

Kit shows them the story he wrote for it, pushed across the desk to them in the middle of Mr. Sims’ lecture. It’s one of heartbreak, and the sea, and rolling, thick fog that suffocates and chokes. It doesn’t have an ending. Perhaps it’s searching for one. 

Dian rolls her eyes at their affection and sticks to the ordinary glasses for her tea. After the insomnia mug, she doesn’t want to take the risk like Ko so often does. Which, she gets. Her friend was awake for weeks, even after she handed off the mug. She’s lucky she only had a few sips. 

As for Ko, any mug in her collection that she can work around is fair game. 

Her friend isn’t as fond of their little friend as they are, but she indulges. 

And, well, Ko knows having a mug of life-sustaining coffee appear for her in the middle of class is a welcome relief, even if she doesn’t particularly trust it.

  
  


_“You have (1) new message:_

_—Uh, hi, Ko James? My name is Maura O’Reilly, I heard you, um, collect? I might have something for you, er, free of charge. I just. I need it gone? And I, ah, heard you can do that for me? If it’s not too much trouble, that is._

_I’m not even sure how something like this can exist, like, physically. It’s, uh, structurally sound, but it really shouldn’t be. Um. It’s… made of web. Like, literally. Don’t ask me how, it just is? And it holds liquid just_ fine _, I just. Look, it’s just really fucking creepy and I want it out of my house._

_There’s a moth, stuck in it. It’s, er, pretty big, to be honest. It makes up the handle, and it twitches sometimes, like it’s… struggling, trying to break free before the spider catches it and I know it’s silly but I think it’s still alive? I… don’t want to think about it. I_ really _don’t want to think about it._

_There, uh, there might be a spider attached to it. If there’s a web, surely there’s got to be a spider, right? I haven’t seen it. Heh, thank God for that._

_I haven’t drunk out of it. I’m not that stupid. People tell me that you, ah, like to know what they can do, but I… I can’t help you on that front, sorry…_

_Just. Call me back. Please.—_

_End of message.”_

  
  


For the most part, Ko hunts them down on her own. Sometimes they come to her on their own, and sometimes others bring them to her, but largely, she seeks them out on her own accord. Of course she does, she’s a collector.

But then one turns up in her mailbox. It’s addressed to ‘The Collector’. 

It’s addressed to _her_.

The mug itself is locked in a lead-lined box, the key taped to the file that came attached. She doesn’t open it—she knows by now that things are contained for a reason—and instead cracks open the file.

It’s a police report from the Metropolitan Police, with the words ‘Section 31’ stamped diagonally across it in bright red lettering on every page. She flicks through it, and sees a photo of the mug she presumes to be now residing in the box. Whatever colour it originally supported was now obscured by layers of soot and ash, the charred ceramic standing proud under the harsh photography lights.

Flicking back to the first page, she flops backwards onto her bed, and reads.

It tells a story. It’s hard to pick out past the dry words and unfamiliar jargon, but she finds it. It tells a story of fire. 

A string of fires, to be more precise. All emerging spontaneously, no perpetrator ever found. Until recently. A mug, recovered from the latest wreckage, the same one appearing in every fire before but dismissed. 

They tested it, the file says. They took it to an open field and they tested it, because they were unsectioned rookies who didn’t understand that they were playing with fire. 

They filled it with water. The mug, sitting in wet grass and nothing else, began to heat. The water turned cloudy, then boiled, then floated off as steam. The water evaporated entirely. And still, the mug heated. It steamed the grass around it, and then dried it, and then charred it, and then it _caught_. 

There are no more unsectioned rookies. The rain didn’t come soon enough to save them. 

Kit and Dian rib her about it the moment they get the opportunity. She, apparently, has garnered enough of a reputation for the London Police to send _her_ a dangerous artefact, rather than donate it to the Magnus Institute. 

“You’re famous, Ko.” Kit grins at her sideways as he sits down. “Try not to let it go to your head.” 

“I don’t get it! I just like collecting stuff, minding my own business, and suddenly I have this big reputation?” Ko throws her hands in the air in defeat. Mr. Sims eyes them from where he’s setting up for class, and she pretends not to notice.

“You could say that you’re a Collector.” She shoves his shoulder and he half-falls out of his chair, laughing all the way. Dian snorts at them from Ko’s other side. She continues to insist that Curator is a far more accurate name, but, well, the Collector has a nicer ring to it.

Ko decides that she likes it.

And so her collection grows.

She finds an internet tale about a glass that gives you papercuts when you drink from it, and follows the trail.

A second-hand shop, when she visits her cousins, offers a party trick mug that gives an exhilarating and terrifying sense of vertigo when you tip your head back to sip from it.

Kit comes across a Craigslist ad for a mug that, when you peer into the bottom, you can see into the secrets and inner lives of a random person, see their darkest moments and strip them down to their very core. See the person they _truly_ are.

And she takes it _all_. 

  
  


Dear Collector,

I’m terribly sorry to send this to you out of the blue, but, well, I heard you could help. I hope this package finds you in good health, and willing to take this dreadful thing off my hands. I don’t understand how you could want things like this, but each to their own, I suppose, and at least it gets it out of the world. 

I first bought this mug two years ago, at a farmers market. It was a darling little thing, all pale pink with soft grey lines, I thought it would make a wonderful addition to my mornings. I wake up early, you see, to watch the sunrise, and I felt this mug would make those mornings just a little bit brighter. Oh, how wrong I was.

The next morning, I went through my usual routine. I made a cuppa with the glass I had bought the day prior. I sat down in my little armchair to watch the sun peak over the horizon. And I took a sip. And then another. 

I can’t explain it, Collector. One moment it was calm, the birds chirping outside and warmth beginning to seep through the world, and then I was forcing viscous oil down my throat like I was suffocating and it was air, but it wasn’t. I wasn’t gasping for breath, but it wasn’t air, but it was. I felt it seep into my bones. I felt it fill me up to the brim and then some, just barely staying inside, one wrong move from spilling. It weighed me down like nothing ever had. I felt so, so heavy. I still do.

Then it was over. The glass was empty and I threw it to the floor, shattering it. Oil dripped from the edges and stained my floor. I was heavy. Once again that compulsion took over, but this time it was like that thick liquid inside me was controlling me, puppeteering me against my will. I reached down to pick up the pieces, not caring if they cut me open. 

There, as the sun rose, I pieced it together, the oil helping it stick like glue and my blood smearing over the sides. And then it was good as new. Pale pink, with grey lines. I’ve never shook so hard in my life.

I left it on my windowsill, the one I use to watch the sunrise. But I don’t do that anymore, not when that weight keeps me locked in bed, dragging me down. It’s always a monumental effort to get up in the mornings, now. Maybe one day it will be too much. I don’t much like that thought.

And so it sat, gathering dust, until I heard about you, and what you do. Please take it. I don’t think it will help me, but if it means it won’t hurt anyone else, then take it.

\- X

**Author's Note:**

> post ur leitner mugs in the comments (and also ur love for the lonely mug. it is friend shaped)


End file.
